Various light-sensitive materials utilizing silver halides as a photo-sensor, excluding so-called conventional photographic light-sensitive materials, are known.
For example, British Patent No. 866,631 discloses a method in which photopolymerization is directly induced by using a silver halide as a catalyst. According to this method, a product resulting from photolysis of a silver halide is considered to act as a catalyst for polymerization, but high sensitivity such as is attained by reduction of silver halides through general development processing cannot be obtained.
Belgian Pat. No. 642,477 describes a method which comprises developing exposed silver halide grains with a general developer and inducing polymerization using the resulting silver image or the unreacted silver halide as a catalyst to imagewise form a polymeric compound. However, this method involves complicated operations.
Further, U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,697,275, 3,687,667, and 3,746,542, and Japanese patent application (OPI) Nos. 138632/82 and 169143/83 (the term "OPI" as used herein refers to a "published unexamined Japanese patent application") describe a method in which an exposed silver halide is developed with a reducing agent and a coexisting vinyl compound initiates polymerization simultaneously with oxidation of the reducing agent to imagewise form a high-molecular weight compound. This method, however, requires a development step using a liquid, and the processing takes a relatively long time.
Thus, each of these known image formation methods using silver halides as a photo-sensor has respective disadvantages, such that high sensitivity cannot be obtained, complicated development processing procedures are required, etc.